by Arthur Stone
“We didn’t do it! It wasn’t our fault! There was this fog. This really thick fog. We couldn’t see anything, and he just came out of the fog! Ran right in front of our car. I don’t know why he would do that. He was probably on drugs, that’s my guess. The way he walked, it was all wrong. Plus, just look at how dirty his clothes are. I’m sure a blood test will show he was on drugs. Maybe there’s even some heroin in his pockets. And opium. And cocaine.”
She seemed like the infection was already getting to her. Her gaze at the bloodied bandit was distant, and not without madness.
Cheater’s arm was growing tired, so he fired a shot.
“Where’s the city? Which direction did you come from?”
Turning at the sound of the gun, the man looked into Cheater’s eyes with the visage of a stunned fawn.
“Er, that way. We came from that way. It’s the fog, I tell you. We must have taken a wrong turn. It’s gone now, but it was here! Something’s wrong with this road. I was expecting a very different road.”
Cheater looked where the man had pointed. About a thousand feet down, the road widened dramatically. That was clearly the cluster border, and this digis had apparently failed to notice the sudden change.
His left arm was barely still obeying his commands, but still it opened the back door of the car.
“Take me back to the city.”
“We have to wait for the police! We just hit a man!” the gentleman continued.
Cheater fired another shot and shouted.
“I said take me now! Get in! Or I’ll blow this woman’s head off! Is that what you want? Well?”
“No! No, please don’t!”
“Then get in and drive. Now. I’m a dangerous terrorist, you understand? You turn me in to the police and they’ll give you commendations and medals and not even bother asking whose fault this little bump in the road was. So get in, before I die. They don’t give out medals for a dead terrorist. Just a living one.”
A moment later the car was bouncing across little potholes, then rushing onto the smooth asphalt, accelerating more and more. Cheater was beginning to lose his connection to reality as he wandered toward the black abyss of unconsciousness. He distantly considered his prospects.
How far away was this city? How bad would things be there? The digis couldn’t have hit that ghoul in the road too long ago, and when they had, the fog had still been thick, so the town shouldn’t be a madhouse yet.
Perhaps Cheater would get to the hospital alive. He didn’t need much from that place, just a blood transfusion and a little bit of stitching to keep the shit from pouring out of his perforated guts into his abdominal cavity.
The wonderful healing gift granted to immunes should take it from there. With a little help, the System was the greatest of physicians.
A healer would be far better than a surgeon, of course, but Cheater had no idea where to find one of the former.
Personal victory: immune Garlic destroyed. Level 23, Humanity: low positive. +2 progress points to Agility. +34 progress points to Accuracy. +4 progress points to Reaction. Note: When you destroy opponents with positive humanity, you are not able to increase your humanity, and even risk reducing it.
So Cheater had killed a player in the green? Thankfully the System had considered his opponent’s actions to be aggression, so Cheater’s Humanity hadn’t taken a hit.
But now he was having regrets. That team of people at the hotel had probably been made up of decent people. They had only gone after Cheater just in case. It never hurt to find out who it was you were encountering in the wild. After a few routine questions, they might have parted peacefully.
Though there was no telling for sure how decent they had been. All sorts of characters were hunting for Cheater these days, including greens.
No matter. What’s done was done.
Chapter 2
Life Six: Blood and Gloom
Negative effect received: extended unconsciousness. Current location: Cluster 364-59-147. Region: Interfluvial Steppe. Current revives remaining: 94 lives (initial value minus 5). Active quests: Survive, Search, Learn Secret, Help, Ask Correct Question, Find the Player Kitty. Current status: returning to game. You will remain stunned for forty-four seconds, though this time may change based on your game circumstances. Hint: avoid extended unconsciousness. When you are in an unfriendly environment, this can lead to undesirable consequences.
Contrary to his expectations, Cheater had gained no memory of his former life upon reaching level ten. This both depressed and puzzled him, as he had heard repeatedly that some of his memory would return to him. That was probably what sharply boosted a tenner’s intellectual abilities, removing the hesitation with which amnesiacs made decisions. Plus all of the life experiences and so on.
But Cheater remembered nothing. Not a single moment more than before.
At first, he assumed the memory refund was simply not an instant process. Perhaps it took minutes or hours. He had felt his intellectual recovery immediately, so at first he had not worried about the memories.
But minutes had passed, then hours, then even days. And yet he remembered nothing.
Perhaps his case was a unique one. Had the System screwed something up?
Cheater might have asked someone, but there was no one to talk to. March, after a few riddles, had dissolved into the bushes. The two of them hadn’t met after that. Even his chat connection to March had died out quickly.
Almost as quickly as Kitty’s had.
When Cheater opened his eyes, he was unsure where he was. It seemed he sat in a large room with high ceilings, but the light was too dim for him to be sure. Details began to become clear as his eyes adjusted. Soon, his brain could draw a rough picture.
Yet at that moment, something else from his old life became clear, as well. A memory. Not just the staircase and elevator door he had seen before.
Cheater remembered a moment from his early adolescence. He wasn’t sure how old he was. Only that he was an awkwardly thin, tall teenager.
He saw himself at the back of a crowded movie theater, with his classmate Sonya. A girl just as tall as he was, but definitely more developed. She hadn’t even caught Cheater’s eye once before summer break, but come September, he could hardly keep his eyes off her. A pleasant discovery for a boy his age.
Sonya was staring at the screen, as Cheater was staring at Sonya. But he was not content to leave it at staring. He dared to do something new. His palm, shaking and sweating in embarrassment, moved to rest on the cloth straining over the girls breast, and he cupped his hand and squeezed.
At last, he had done it. He had done it!
A mixture of emotions hit him, but not quite the feelings he’d expected. He imagined he would feel nothing but supreme delight at such an accomplishment, but all he felt was something akin to disappointment. Knockers should be pleasantly elastic, he thought, like a flexible rubber that reveals its stiffness only when pressed. But things were much more malleable than expected. A depressing find, and not just literally.
Yet Sonya did not, as he had hoped, roll her eyes with pleasure. She seemed to have no regard for the great courage this cavalier had mustered to reach out to her. Cheater was basically losing his virginity here, while she was directing a stare as unblinking as a dead sardine’s at the screen.
What could possibly be more interesting about a dumb movie, anyway? How could a girl ignore her drooling, pimply teenage boyfriend crushing her breasts through her blouse?
“Dumb” was right. Someone was being chased by monsters, and someone else had already been caught and was now screaming as puddles of cranberry juice squirted every which way. She was just mocking him. Who wanted to watch a movie like that any under circumstance?
And in this circumstance, there was an inestimably nicer alternative, sitting right next to her.
His palm moved to the mound’s twin.
All in all, it was a useless memory. But he understood why it had come to him at this moment.
Cheater couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Blinking didn’t help, so he tried to wipe his eyes, but something was holding his hands in place. What? They were no longer paralyzed by the womanly charms of Sonya. He saw what looked like shackles binding them.
He was right. Not real shackles, though. They were made out of scotch tape, liberally applied. He struggled. Bound tight.
It wasn’t just on his limbs, either. Cheater squinted. He was lying naked on a cross-shaped table that looked like a place for primitive surgical operations. Besides his hands and feet, his torso and neck were all wrapped up and stuck down. Some parts of his body had more freedom than others, but try as he might, he was unable to rise. As though someone had wanted to swaddle him up like an Egyptian mummy but had been obliged to leave airholes.
But perhaps he could ascertain why. Wires, catheters, and tubes of mysterious purpose poked out, visible in the areas unbound by tape.
Alright. What’s the last thing I remember? He had been sitting in the car, barking at the slowpoke driver now and then to hurry him up. Then the city had appeared ahead.
Or had it? He couldn’t be sure. That must have happened just as Cheater passed out, so it was fuzzy.
What would have happened then? How did he end up in this warehouse of budget horror movie props? Maybe he could guess.
There was a peculiar lamp hanging from the ceiling, tables lining the wall, and some strange electronic devices. Even the overpowering stench of rotten meat could not completely eclipse the smell of antiseptic and medicine.
So Cheater was in an operating room. How he got here was easy enough to guess. He had been brought in while seriously wounded and immediately sent to surgery.
But something had interrupted the surgery. And rather than relocate the patient to a ward to recover, the staff had left him here.
Of course, that just wasn’t how things were done. They’d be fired for such an oversight. Though Cheater doubted their employment could survive the real reason, either: the rapid onset of the monstrous infection. How long could the operation have taken? Surgeons required hours to deal with serious injuries to the intestines, or to other equally vital organs. Yet the city would have descended into chaos rapidly. The number of psychos on the streets would have grown exponentially, restricted only because other soon-to-be psychos would perish in the early birds’ acts of unfathomably senseless cruelty. The first walking dead would have appeared and began to hunt those who had not yet been converted. And veteran and newbie players alike would have been scurrying around in the midst of it all. Some trying to leave the dangerous location, whether noisily or stealthily, and others hastily looting gun stores, police departments, and any military facilities. These actions would have only exacerbated the situation.
Whatever had happened, it had landed Cheater in this operating room, alone. But something didn’t fit in his reconstruction of events. How could there be gnawed human bones here? The infecteds must have enjoyed a feast here. By the ransacked appearance of the remains and the unbearable stink, Cheater knew it had been two or three days, at least.
So why the hell hadn’t they taken a single bite from his own body? Had they thought him dead? Hardly. That didn’t make any sense. The creatures ate and ate until there was nothing good left, and even a newly-christened infected was extremely unlikely to miss a meal like him.
Cheater tried to shake his head, forgetting it was immobilized.
He was in the midst of a lair of infecteds, and yet was uneaten, for some reason. There was no sense theologizing about the latter. Time to figure out what to do. The ghouls could return at any moment, and in a less generous mood than before, with claws ready to make quick work of the scotch tape. Cheater hardly missed those claws, so his priority was to get out of here.
Now.
But the scotch tape seemed rigged to keep him immobile for a good forty years. In certain places, at least. Whoever had bound him must have simply figured that a man with his intestines torn out hardly needed to be bound everywhere.
His intestines were in place, though. And quite hungry. Even the sickening stench of the place could not purge him of his appetite. That was a good sign that he was healthy.
Cheater wriggled his limbs for a few minutes and managed to loosen his left arm, giving his hand some freedom. His fingers joined the effort. They clutched at the scotch tape and tried to tear it. If they succeeded, he would be free in moments. As Cheater fought his sticky shackles, he broke one of his nails, which had grown to become inconveniently long. This gave him a new, jagged razor-edge to saw through the tape with.
Long nails. Huh. Immunes’ nails did grow quickly, like their hair, but not instantly. He could estimate how long he had been here: Five days, give or take. No less than three, to be sure.
At last his left hand was free. It was all downhill from there, and Cheater was freed from his fetters more quickly than he could have been bound with them by his unknown enemies. Only his legs remained, so he sat up. Famished pains jabbed his stomach, but otherwise he felt fine. None of the agonies he remembered from the car were present anymore.
He bent over, grabbed a scalpel, and cut his legs loose. As they were numb and slow to respond, he rubbed them and wiggled his feet before dangling them over the edge.
The floor was cold and disturbingly sticky. The illumination in the operating room was poor and patchy, destabilized by patches of orange filtering in through the window blinds. Cheater was unable to draw any conclusions about the state of affairs outside. But he had his guesses.
Nausea advanced on him, fighting back his appetite.
Time to go. He’d had enough of this cave of maniacs.
How could he safely leave as quickly as possible?
Grimacing and clenching his teeth, he began to tear off strips of plaster and pull out needles and mysterious catheters and sensors connected to medical devices long devoid of power. Thankfully they had not placed any of those things up his nose or mouth, or he might have suffocated.
The perplexing orange light surged in intensity. Cheater took advantage of the visibility boost and looked around the tables for some kind of weapon. There he saw an open notebook with distressed writing. Reading was not the first activity he had planned, but he happened to see a phrase or two: “...wounds like this are beyond any hospital’s ability, but His Excellency continues living. His Excellency is great! His Excellency is mighty! His Excellency is strong! His excellence eclipses the brilliance of the Moon and the radiance of the Sun!”
He couldn’t resist scooping up the strange notebook, along with another scalpel. First, he turned a sheet into a sad imitation of a toga. He was too cold, and even embarrassed, to prance through the halls naked.
Wobbling as they were, his legs successfully brought him to the window, and through the blinds he saw the source of the orange light. A four-story building across the road was ablaze. Half of the windows had blown out from the flames, and the rest were partly open and billowing smoke. This fire was complete with the standard pair of useless onlookers, but in this case, they were ghouls. One was clad in a filthy surgical coat. The other was naked. They stared at the fire and engaged in their ritual swaying, from heels to toes and back again.
Having analyzed the situation, Cheater leaned back against the blinds and began to leaf through the notebook.
It seemed ridiculous, suicidal, even, to engage in reading at a time like this.
But only those prone to missing the forest
for the trees would come to that conclusion. This city was done for. It was a local hell, complete with infernos and demons. But it was still fresh, only recently extinct, so there was an increased density of powerful creatures here. Experienced immunes knew to keep their distance at times like this. Even a mighty squad of armored vehicles would be in mortal danger, not to mention a lone level ten.
And hospitals were even worse. For all their qualities, they stank alluringly of blood and helpless invalids, prime bait for infecteds. The most massive of beasts would have cleaned out the patients and staff by now, and then likely proceeded to nearby areas. They would still be about.
Under these circumstances, haste was not the best idea. Even though Cheater was in a place of extreme danger, leaping out of this frying pan would land him in the fire. Perhaps even literally. At the very least, it would land him in the jaws of a high-level monster.
These scribblings were information, and information was one of this world’s most precious treasures. They could be worthless, but there was no knowing until he read them.
So read he did. Sometimes, the reading was easy. At other times, it was hard, and he couldn’t tell whether the writers had been affected by the growing parasite or just had a terminal case of MD penmanship.
A few minutes later, he sat on the floor and set the notebook aside, then opened his menu and studied his meters. Nothing seemed critically low, but there was one note in Debuffs. “You are recovering from a severe injury. In your current state, all your base and bonus stats suffer a -10% to -45% penalty. Your senses and movement are hampered and you can only consume light foods. Approximate recovery time to minimum norms: 19–42 hours.”
He saw the active chat window, then, blinking at him in annoyance.
So March had come around to say hello. Unlike Kitty, he was still within range. Not that he had ever intended to disappear. Cheater still couldn’t perceive March’s intentions, but at least the man wasn’t ghosting him.